


with all you thought you knew coming undone

by darklanguages



Series: pistols at dawn [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Pre-Overwatch, Shaving Kink, Sibling Incest, vague suicide ideation reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:04:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18662800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darklanguages/pseuds/darklanguages
Summary: You can sharpen a blade to keenness or you can sharpen it 'til it breaks.





	with all you thought you knew coming undone

The first razor Hanzo owns is given to him by one of his father’s favorite hitmen. He is ten, and it is decided that he’s of age to start attending clan business meetings. Hanzo stands behind his father, back straight, hands properly folded, and tries not to react as the man with dead eyes and dragons on his neck details exactly how he slaughtered the Arakaki family right down to the children sleeping in their beds.

On his way out, the hitman pauses by Hanzo. He gives a smile that shows a gold tooth and claps him on the shoulder, congratulating him on joining the family business.

“Here,” he says, and hands Hanzo something heavy and made of bone and metal. “You’re just about a man now, time to start shaving like one, eh?” Hanzo murmurs his thanks with a quick bow and slips it into his pocket.

Later that night he sits in his darkened bedroom, on the corner of the futon next to the lamp. The thing feels old in his still baby-round hands, age-softened rectangles of bone with steel nestled inside. He runs his fingers over the polished surface, wondering what animal it came from. Gently tugging on the bit of metal that protrudes out from the end, he’s startled when the rest of the blade smoothly slides out, so quickly that the corner catches his finger.

“What’s that?” There’s a sleepy voice from behind him, and the mattress dips as Genji crawls over, knuckling away bleariness from his eyes.

“A present from one of father’s friends,” Hanzo says absently.

“I want a present, how come I don’t get a present?” Genji is all of seven, his life’s focus is sweets and spinning until he’s dizzy and avoiding their maths tutor. Somewhere deep inside Hanzo knows that this should be his life too, but it’s tamped down by his father’s expectations and his own innate sense of responsibility.

“It’s a straight razor, you use it to shave with. You don’t need it yet. And it’s too dangerous, you would just cut yourself with it.”

Genji points to the blade. “You already did, see?”

There’s a drop of fresh blood where Hanzo had nicked himself pulling the blade out, but Genji is pointing further along at a large fingerprint rendered in dark red-brown. It sits next to the engraving of the Arakaki clan’s symbol, a rooster with its foot on a snake. Hanzo puts his finger on top of the print and doesn’t come close to covering it.

A small, soft hand reaches over his shoulder, traces over the engraving of the snake. “It almost looks like our dragons, doesn’t it?” Genji asks.

Hanzo shrugs. “It’s a snake, not a dragon, and anyways they didn’t win. We’re still here. They are not.”

Genji hooks his chin over Hanzo’s shoulder and runs light fingers over the razor, secure in the knowledge that Hanzo will hold it for him. His tea-sweet breath fogs the surface of the blade, and when he goes to wipe it away he slices his finger on the edge. He pulls back with a hiss, but Hanzo catches his hand before it can go farther. He examines Genji’s finger, a drop of dark blood welling to the surface and threatening to fall.

Hanzo knows the hell they will catch if they get blood on the bed or their clothes, so he leans forward without thinking and pulls the finger into his mouth, soft tongue soothing the sting. Protect Genji, do not disturb father. The two biggest motivators in Hanzo’s life.

They sit there for a minute without moving, two boys and a bloodied blade in a pool of light. Hanzo finally pulls back, examines Genji’s spit-wet finger.

“You’re okay. But that’s why we don’t touch it, all right?” He can feel the dig of a sharp chin into his shoulder as Genji nods. “Go to bed, father said we were going somewhere in the morning.” Hanzo is fairly sure they’re being moved in case of retaliation from the Arakaki clan members who weren’t at the house, but doesn’t tell his brother. Let him have a good rest.

Genji’s thin arms give him a quick hug before he scrambles back to his own futon. Hanzo shuts the blade, tucks it into a drawer of his nightstand.

Later he’ll learn about cleaning weapons before storage, of sanding and buffing. For now, though, Hanzo and Genji’s innocent blood is smeared into the recesses of the riveted bone scales that hold the blade. The blood won’t come out now, having worked its way into the spaces and cracks. Over the next week Sojiro’s men will pick off the last few members of the Arakaki family. The last man, a brother of the clan leader, will die with a slit throat and a gurgle of blood. That same blood is printed on the blade that now lies forgotten in Hanzo’s drawer, as the two boys run around their bedroom playing tag.

-x-x-x-x-x-

A few years later, Hanzo visits his father’s barber. He has patchy bits of hair coming in on his face, and he hates it. Hates how it’s itchy and unkempt, hates how his jaw underneath is sharpening to look more like his father as the baby fat melts away. Most of all, he hates how his father is looking at him differently. Less like a pet that is to be occasionally paid attention to but then turned over to tutors the rest of the time, and more like a person. More like someone who could take over the clan one day. More like a weapon.

The barber, ancient Ibō who has been with the Shimadas since before Sojiro was born, takes the Arakaki razor that Hanzo shows him and sniffs. “This was once a good blade, but has not been taken care of. See here? No one cleaned the blood off. Rust and rot.” Hanzo stays quiet instead of admitting that it is his and Genji’s blood.

“This is some other clan’s sigil. You don’t want that.” He moves to throw it away, but Hanzo stops him, slips it back in his pocket. “Hah,” the old man says, eyeing Hanzo up and down. “What do you want with a straight razor anyways? Good shave, but it takes skill, takes time.”

Hanzo wants to shrug, but hears his father’s voice in the back of his head saying that shrugging is a sign of indecisiveness and weakness. “I thought the blade was beautiful. Traditional. It is worth a little time to have a proper appearance.” All of this is true. He doesn’t say that there’s something about the cold curve of metal that fascinates him, attracts him. How his thumb fits perfectly in the inward curve on the side of the blade. It’s lovely and functional and deadly, a small death masquerading as a beauty implement. Powerful, in its own small way.

Ibō teaches him about the differences between hollow ground and wedge blades, the different types of grinds and the different types of blade points. Hanzo falls in love with the delicate singing blades, double hollow ground and sharpened so finely that they sound out tones when stropped or the edge is plucked with a nail. Fine enough to cut paper, to split hair, to bisect nerves.

Hanzo learns to sharpen blades on a waterstone at precise angles, to strop until the edge is realigned, to mix lather until frothy and white. It’s all ritual, at its core, and Hanzo is so very good at following orders exactly. He collects blades slowly - the original from the hitman, several from Ibō, one from a weapons tutor who had noticed his interest, a particularly beautiful example from one of his father’s guards who had seen it in a shop and thought of him.

The guard is young, with dancing eyes and everything to prove to the Shimadas. One night finds him giving Hanzo the razor, saying with blotchy flushed cheeks that he had been visiting family in Chiba when he remembered Hanzo’s collection. Another night sees Hanzo slipping out of a doorway as the guard comes off duty, tugging him into an alcove and pressing him into the wall with eager hands and frantic mouth. The early hours of another night has Hanzo gasping into his folded arms, the tatami mat harsh on his knees, the guard’s pants from behind him even harsher.

After that night Hanzo doesn’t see the guard again. When he asks his weapons tutor, the man looks aside and says that he found other employment. Hanzo doesn’t enquire further. He doesn’t want to know, although his father’s disapproving looks the following day had spoken volumes.

The next morning when Hanzo is shaving, he holds the blade up to his face like usual, only to take it away. He holds the cold metal to his neck and then his wrist, but neither is quite right at the moment. This is too minor a thing to bring down a Shimada.

Hanzo accepts more and more responsibility and training from his father and the clan as he grows older. The one and only time he stands up to him is when he states that Genji will have to carry on the family line, because his interests lie elsewhere. The room empties of men as Hanzo and Sojiro stare at each other, unstoppable youth meeting immovable age. Eventually Sojiro turns away - not an acceptance, but a tabling of the issue. For now.

Hanzo knows that this will be revisited when he is older, but for now perhaps there will be no more dead guards. Somehow, though, Hanzo has lost his interest in finding another.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Several mirrors are set up in the corner of Hanzo’s bedroom. He arranges lights, trying to get them to reflect but not blind. There’s a soft noise as Genji pushes the partially open door wider.

“What...are you doing?” he asks in bemusement.

Hanzo walks into the bathroom, comes out with his shaving kit and a bowl of warm water. “You know what tomorrow is.”

“Indeed I do.” Genji pulls his tablet out of his pocket, glances at the time. “Two hours and you become a real man.”

“Father showed me the tattoo that is planned,” Hanzo says, and Genji’s smiling face sobers. The tattoos are miracles - somehow allowing the Shimadas to access their family’s legacy. They are also intricate and painful, traditional irezumi done with hand-tapped ink. There are decades-old rumors passed around of ancestors who died from either the process or the failure to control the power afterwards.

“The skin must be shaved before it’s tattooed,” Hanzo says as he removes his shirt and sits. He frowns in the mirror as he ties his hair back, trying to figure out how he will get at the back of his shoulder.

“Hanzo.” A gentle hand touches Hanzo’s shoulder when he doesn’t respond, and he meets Genji’s eyes in the mirror. “Let me.”

Hanzo frowns harder. He taught Genji to shave with a straight razor a year previous, but Genji uses electric razors, claiming ease and a lesser chance of slitting his own throat. Genji had mostly grown out of the needing-to-do-everything-Hanzo-did stage of his life by the time puberty hit, but he’s still interested in his brother’s few passions outside of what their father dictates.

“Please.”

Hanzo sighs and hands the bowl with soap over. Denying Genji has never been anything he’s good at.

Genji dips the silvertip badger brush in water, then swirls it in the soap. His narrow fingers move rapidly, the lather building quickly. He pauses, dipping his free hand in the bowl of water and wetting Hanzo’s shoulder as he murmurs directions. The brush scrapes lightly on Hanzo’s skin, and it shivers up into goose pimples.

With a look of determination, Genji strokes the blade along Hanzo’s pectoral muscle. It’s his finest blade, the edge terrifyingly sharp. The skin only has thin hairs here, mostly invisible from more than a few inches away, but Hanzo is under strict orders to be as bare as possible so the tattoo can take hold.

Hanzo watches as Genji relaxes into the rhythm of it all. Pull skin taut, scrape, rinse, repeat. Hanzo can feel his face warm. He’s not used to another person touching him so much. As children he and Genji slept in each others’ beds as much as they did their own, but after getting their own rooms when Hanzo was thirteen it was a far rarer occurrence. Hanzo has few friends, fewer lovers. Knowing what could happen to someone he was close to has made him shy away from anyone other than those in friendly clans who have their own protections.

As Genji raises his arm, razor scraping along the delicate inner skin, Hanzo tries not to squirm. This is not sexual, this is his brother, he tells himself. His body doesn’t listen, warm curls of interest worming their way through him as Genji’s sure hands rotate his arm this way and that.

He works his way down, down, scraping black hairs off his forearm. Genji turns his arm, and the blade scrapes down his inner wrist. There’s no hair here, but Genji still shaves the skin clean. Hanzo has the intrusive thought of clenching his fist, letting the tendons rise up so the blade would cut in. It would be hard to wield the family swords with just one hand, hard to draw a bow. Perhaps all his problems would be solved, then.

Hanzo drifts, imagining a life where he would be handless and free.

“All done.” Hanzo blinks and looks down. His left arm is hairless, perfect tan skin. Genji swipes a finger through the container of balm, starts smoothing it over the skin. Hanzo half raises his other arm to protest and do it himself, but Genji’s hands are soothing and warm. The arousal that had died away during his fantasies of escape comes roaring back.

Hanzo glowers at the floor, at his own body. Genji is fifteen and his brother. There is nothing to come of this foolishness.

“Are you afraid?” Genji asks, quietly.

“It’s not a matter of fear. It must be done and will be done regardless of how I feel about it, so whether I am nervous or not doesn’t matter.”

“How fatalistic.” Genji rubs for a half minute more. “Three years off, for me. Maybe if yours goes well, they won’t make me do it,” he says, hope in his voice.

Hanzo laughs, deep in his throat. “Doubtful. But if anyone could get away with not having the tattoo, it would be you, Genji. You are indulged.”

Genji rolls his eyes, but finishes rubbing the balm into Hanzo’s skin. There’s some remainder, but instead of putting it back into the container Genji massages it into Hanzo’s hand. He turns to get closer, hooking a leg over Hanzo’s knee, curling his ankle around his waist. It is...too familiar, too close for brothers, one of whom is about to be eighteen.

“Genji.” Hanzo drops the name into the silence like a stone into a pond.

There’s a glance upwards, bright eyes through dark lashes. “You said I was indulged, anija. Indulge me.”

Hanzo is on his feet before he quite knows what happens, Genji in a confused sprawl at his feet. He never did train in hand-to-hand as much as he should. Hanzo gathers up the bowl, brush and blade, carrying them into the bathroom without a backwards glance. By the time he is done rinsing and putting everything away, Genji is gone.

Hours later, Hanzo opens his eyes in bed as the door behind him slides quietly open. There’s a weight on the bed behind him, a familiar scent of sweetness and cedar.

“You should not be here,” Hanzo says into the quiet.

A lengthy pause. “This is our last night as children, brother. Let me comfort you.”

Hanzo doesn’t mention that it is long past midnight, that he is now an adult in the eyes of the law. “We have not been children for some time now.”

There’s no response, only a narrow arm that Hanzo allows to wrap around him and warm breaths at the nape of his neck that slow into sleep.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Hanzo pauses in front of his bedroom door. The dark wood and pale screen mock him, pristine and spotless. He looks down at his hands, the blood streaking them tacky but not yet dry. Finally he pulls a dagger out of his belt - it’s somewhat clean, having been wiped off on a dead man’s pants not half an hour ago. He uses it to nudge the door open, sliding smoothly in its runners.

He sheds clothing piece by piece on his way to the bathroom, weapons having first been carefully stacked in a corner for later maintenance. The water in the shower runs pink for long after it gets cold. Hanzo redresses in soft clothes that he tells himself are for ease and not comfort.

Out of habit he pulls out his shaving kit - he normally shaves after showering in the morning. It’s 3 am now, the hour of the wolf and the witch. Apparently the hour of the dragon, as well.

It’s while he’s staring at himself in the mirror that the bathroom door opens.

“Trying to find yourself in there?” Genji is slouching against the doorframe, fingers drumming against the wall.

“Nice to see you join the land of civilization,” Hanzo says tiredly. He meets Genji’s eyes in the mirror, sees the pupils blown so wide there’s just the thinnest ring of brown surrounding them. “Oh. My mistake.”

Hanzo pulls his hair back in a loose tail, hands moving automatically. Genji is talking, something about some party, how Hanzo doesn’t get out of the house. Hanzo tunes him out with the ease of long practice. He thinks of how the Tanaka fighter had yanked his headwrap off, nearly strangled him with a hand tangled in his hair. Hanzo pulls the tie out, reties his hair higher up.

He holds the razor, bouncing it lightly in one hand as he looks at himself. Tries to see himself as a person who isn’t Sojiro’s son, who isn’t Genji’s brother. Who isn’t a Shimada. Without those, however, there’s nothing left. Without those, there’s just a void in the shape of a man.

Genji trails off as Hanzo raises his arms, pulls his hair tight and saws most of his hair off with a single stroke of his razor. The hair falls, covering the floor in streaks of darkness. A piece of hair flops forward, just barely too short to be held by the hair tie. Hanzo brushes it to the side, knowing already that it will annoy him.

The razor is plucked from his fingers, and Hanzo frowns. Genji spins the razor around, the metal shining in the light.

“The absolute last thing you should have is a blade in your hands,” Hanzo says.

“I’ve done far more labor-intensive work when far more impaired. Kneel, you’re too tall.”

Hanzo folds himself down into seiza, a tug on his hair pulling him up on his knees. He watches as Genji focuses with the single-mindedness that only the coked up can have, separating the tied up hair into pieces and trimming them with quick slashes of the razor. Hanzo would be more worried if Genji didn’t do ridiculous things to his own hair on a regular basis. Today it is blue, two weeks ago it was pink.

Long fingers appear in front of his face and hold the piece of hair that had flopped forward. Hanzo wants to close his eyes but can’t take them off of the infinitely sharp metal that slices away just an inch from his face.

“Better.” Genji brushes bits of hair away as Hanzo stands, quick touches that are here and gone. The hair is stubborn, and finally with a sound of annoyance Genji reaches around to unzip Hanzo’s sweatshirt, tugs it off his unresisting body. Bits of hair are brushed away and brushed away, until Genji is just stroking bare skin.

He wraps his arms loosely around Hanzo’s waist, rests his forehead against the nape of his neck. A position familiar during childhood, but inappropriate for men in their twenties.

“What brought all this on?”

“Do you care?”

Arms tighten. “I always care, anija.”

He does, at that. Even as he dances his way through half of Hanamura, shoving whatever and whoever he can up his nose or his ass, Genji still cares. Not enough to stop, not enough to shoulder any of what Sojiro has piled onto Hanzo’s broad shoulders, but he does care.

“The Tanakas are gone.”

“So was this a celebration or an expression of defeat?”

Hanzo tries to shake Genji off, to leave, but he won’t let go. “I need to sleep, Genji.”

“So sleep with me.” An innocent comment between siblings, but for the hand creeping lower and lower on Hanzo’s stomach, just barely brushing the waistband of his pants. Hanzo looks at Genji in the mirror, and his eyes are focused on the move of his fingers over Hanzo’s increasingly tense stomach muscles. He does this, sometimes. Hanzo pretends it doesn’t affect him, Genji pretends the next morning he didn’t do anything. They smile and lie and don’t look each other in the eyes for a few days

“Genji.”

“Perhaps I should work out more, get myself as defined as you,” he murmurs into Hanzo’s shoulder, warm skin under warmer lips. Genji is far from out of shape, but he has their mother’s narrow shoulders instead of the Shimada broadness that Hanzo shares with their father. He works out right along with Hanzo, but everyone knows that Hanzo trains for survival while Genji trains to fit into this season’s sample sizes.

“When was the last time you relaxed?” Genji says, mouth far too close to Hanzo’s ear. Hanzo makes sure to schedule time for himself, time to read and to meditate, but he knows that’s not what Genji’s talking about. For that, it has been...years. Since Genji took advantage of adulthood’s privileges and Hanzo was left with its responsibilities.

“You aren’t sober.”

“Sober is for clan elders and Shimada boys who don’t know how to let their hair down.” Genji reaches up, tugs the hair tie loose. Hanzo’s sweat-damp and newly shorn hair falls, the ends brushing his shoulders like a silken curtain. Genji combs his fingers though, making soft noises of contentment as his other hand absently plays with the thin line of hair under Hanzo’s navel, that leads down and down to places a brother shouldn’t go.

Hanzo pulls away, needing to stop this before it goes too far. He turns once he’s in the doorway. “You should go to bed. In your own room.”

Genji shrugs, stretches his arms up before clasping them together on top of his head. He’s obvious and hard in his thin pants, and doesn’t know or - far more likely - doesn’t care. “You used to be more fun.”

“Not this kind of fun.” Hanzo shuts the light off, leaving Genji in darkness. He listens to him leave as he readies himself for bed, hears him go to his own room next door. There’s the quiet murmur of a high pitched voice as his door slides open, followed by Genji’s murmured baritone. He’d left tonight’s conquest in his room to...what? Cut Hanzo’s hair and then try to seduce him? He truly has no shame.

Hanzo lies in bed and stares at the ceiling as Genji’s current plaything pants and cries from just a dozen feet and a thin wall away. He’s spent much time over the past few years listening to Genji’s lovers, but never so soon after having Genji’s hands on his own body. He’s ignores it and is nearly asleep until he hears Genji’s voice, low and needy. Something in Hanzo’s hindbrain preens to know that this girl was the second choice, that everyone will always be the second choice to Hanzo.

He slips a shameful hand into his pants, finding his release with his teeth clamped around his wrist and Genji’s muffled moans in his ears.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Decide between yourselves as you see fit, but time is short and we need to establish the family line with an heir.” Sojiro stares at Hanzo and Genji in turn, before turning and walking out, leaning on his elaborately carved cane and breathing heavily.

Hanzo and Genji stay in their low bows until the edge of Sojiro’s hakama disappears around the edge of the door. Without speaking they rise and walk to Hanzo’s room, steps measured and careful. Hanzo glances around to make sure no guards are near before he slides the door shut.

“So how about it, Hanzo? Ready to make me an uncle?” Genji says with a smile that slowly dissolves as he takes in Hanzo’s face.

“This was the one thing I stood up to father on, a decade ago. The only thing. I do not sleep with women, you sleep with anything that moves. Go find an honorable woman and fuck a child into her,” Hanzo says flatly.

Genji blinks, mouth hanging open slightly. Hanzo is rarely so direct, nor so crude. “I...you’re the eldest son -”

“And I do absolutely everything for this family,” Hanzo hisses out viciously. “For once in your life, think of someone other than yourself.”

Genji stares, barely recognizing the bitterness in Hanzo’s voice. He has always been Genji’s rock, his source of stability in the chaos of his life. To find him so vehement about this is...disconcerting.

“I should make a few calls,” he says, finally. “There’s a chance that, ah…”

“There could already be an heir out there?”

“Yes.” Genji gives his best charming smile. “You know how it is, when you’re in the middle of things and you don’t always remember to be careful.”

“No,” says Hanzo. “I don’t.” He leaves it there, not elaborating. Genji’s smile fades.

“Make your calls. Let me know. I will do research on prospective matches.”

Genji looks back when he reaches the doorway, but Hanzo already has his back turned, typing on his tablet.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Come out and tell me how respectable I look!”

Hanzo pauses, rinses, pulls his cheek taut. “No.”

“I’m due to go out on an actual, normal date with a proper young woman, Hanzo. The least you could do is be supportive.”

“I found her, vetted her, and made the reservations. Exactly how much more supportive do you intend me to be?”

A sigh from the other side of the door, and a thunk that might be the sound of a head hitting the doorframe. “Can’t we just pay for a surrogate? It would be so much easier on my stress levels.”

“No,” Hanzo says firmly. “You will meet this woman, you will date her for an acceptable period of time. You will marry, have a child, divorce if you must but make sure she is adequately taken care of.”

Genji sighs. “Fine.” He taps his fingers slowly against the wall. “At least there’s a new club opening on the west side next week.”

“No clubbing.”

“What.”

“How do you expect to marry a respectable woman if there are pictures of you doing lines off of a go-go boy’s rear end on the news sites?”

The bathroom door is yanked open. Genji stands there in a well-cut charcoal suit, usual extravagance toned down to just a smudge of eyeliner and threads of forest green in his hair. “Just because you gave up your life for the family does not mean I have to give up mine!” He blinks, tilts his head slowly to the side. “Hanzo, what are you doing?”

“Shaving.”

Genji’s eyes slowly move down. They linger. “You’re naked.”

“Yes.”

“...Why are you naked?”

Hanzo doesn’t deign to answer. While Genji often shows up half or nearly-nude in the papers, Hanzo has never been one to flaunt his body to the public. He often tucks away one sleeve of his yukata during training to keep it from getting tangled in his bowstring’s snapback, but other than that he wears clothing properly. It’s been some years since Genji has seen this much of him.

Hanzo finishes shaping his mustache, moves on to scraping the whiskers from under his chin. His head is tilted back, eyes lidded, and he watches Genji watch him as much as he keeps track of his own actions. Hanzo finishes, rinses the blade off. He adds a bit more water to the soap, starts to swirl the brush to lather it once more.

“What, aren’t you done?” Genji asks, insolence threading its way through his voice. There’s no sign of insolence in the choked noise he makes seconds later, as Hanzo steps back to spread the foam over his groin.

“Please,” Hanzo looks up, startled at the neediness, the near-desperation in Genji’s voice. “Please, anija, let me do this for you.” Genji visibly has to drag his eyes up to meet Hanzo’s, and Hanzo nearly has to look away from what he sees there. Clarity, sobriety, and as if he just saw the answer to all his prayers.

Against every instinct that screams this is a bad idea, Hanzo reaches over, grabs a bowl and fills it with water. He steps back from the counter and turns, and Genji’s knees hit the floor moments later with a painful-sounding crack. Heedless of the water soaking into his expensive trousers, Genji reaches up to carefully bring the bowl down. Hanzo holds out the razor. Genji takes it, but doesn’t realize that it’s still open. The blade swings free on its rivets, catching the edge of Hanzo’s thumb.

Genji makes a noise louder than Hanzo does, grabbing at his hand. Blood wells from the small nick, seeping into the cracks of the thick calluses that have built up from years of weapons work. Genji leans forward to lick the blood away with a pink tongue, frowns when more seeps up. He wraps his lips around Hanzo’s finger, seeming to realize belatedly their exact position as his eyes widen and he looks up.

Hanzo can feel the color high on his cheeks, knows his breath is coming faster. The coolness of the shaving soap is the only reason he isn’t fully hard right now, but he’s well on his way. He pulls his thumb back slightly, traces over Genji’s upper lip. The roughness catches, tugging at the soft skin. He lets his hand fall back to his side, leaving behind a smear of blood that Genji absently swipes away with his tongue.

“What about the woman?” Hanzo asks hoarsely.

“What woman?”

There’s a line that’s been crossed, that’s been trampled over, and neither man is looking back.

Genji lifts his hand with the razor. Shaky at first, but he steadies as Hanzo runs his hand through his hair. Scrape, scrape, rinse. Pull the skin taut. Scrape, rinse. It would be nothing to remark on, an echo of a thousand past actions, if it wasn’t Genji. If it wasn’t his brother, with his hand moving Hanzo’s cock.

It’s easier to shave when you’re hard, and Hanzo tells himself that as a thick drip of precome cuts a line through the shaving soap. Genji’s hands stutter to a stop when he notices, then picks back up again. Scrape, rinse, move your brother’s dick thirty degrees left. Repeat.

Clean, softened skin is revealed, bit by bit. When the last bit of foam is gone, Genji sits back on his heels. Hanzo doesn’t look at him, isn’t sure what he wants to see on his face. Instead he’s mixing up more soap, more lather. He finally catches Genji’s eye, who frowns right up until Hanzo reaches a soap-white hand behind him, drags it in and up.

Hanzo turns, props a foot up on the bidet, leans forward to rest his arms on the counter. Waits. He can hear a long, shaky breath from behind him before there’s a warm hand on one cheek, pulling it aside. The routine begins again.

Genji has made his name for himself in being the pinnacle of confidence, of style, of what is In. It’s flaunted to an extent in front of the rest of the clan, less so in front of their father. It all but vanishes when it’s just him and Hanzo, however. Genji will poke and prod and needle, but at the end of the day it is always Hanzo that will be his touchstone. Hanzo who will center him, Hanzo who will bring him back to himself.

It would follow, then, Hanzo thinks to himself, that now when this years-long dance between them is coming to an end, that Genji falters. That touchstone is shifting, and Genji isn’t sure where it will go.

The razor is set on the counter and isn’t picked up again. Hanzo feels one hand on him, then another.

“Can I?”

Hanzo doesn’t reply, but reaches over to yank a drawer open. He pulls out a familiar, half-full bottle by touch and drops it next to Genji. It wobbles for a moment and then falls over, forgotten, as Genji ignores it. Hanzo’s eyes slowly slide shut as there’s something warm and wet and flexible stroking over him. Into him. All over the skin just shaved clean.

There are vulgar sounds coming from behind him, smacks and squelches and moans deep in Genji’s throat as he takes Hanzo apart with his mouth. Hanzo’s hands grip the counter with white knuckles. All he wants to do is to reach down and touch, to smooth the slow drip of fluid he can feel inching its way down all over himself, but he knows that if he does it’ll all be over far too soon.

Genji’s mouth is replaced by fingers, long and clever and slick. Tugging at his rim, seeing how far he can stretch before venturing deeper. Turning and searching until Hanzo tightens his fingers convulsively, making the wood of the counter creak under his hands.

He steps forward after a few minutes, fingers pulling out with an obscene sound. Hanzo doesn’t like to be too loose, it’s the burn that makes everything sweeter. He doesn’t want to feel lubrication, he wants to feel _Genji_.

Turning, he gazes down at his brother. Genji looks dazed - suit rumpled with bits of shaving foam smeared here and there, lips swollen and reddened. He looks like a child given everything he ever wanted for his birthday, and now doesn’t know where to begin. Hanzo steps over him and walks to the door. He glances back.

“Coming?” Genji scrambles to his feet, snatching the bottle from the floor at the last second. Hanzo walks to his bed and lays down, stretches, props a leg up. Genji stares down at him, expression eager and hesitant. Hanzo reaches a hand to scratch at the knee that’s currently shielding him from Genji’s eyes.

“Are you planning on wearing that clothing all night?” he asks, voice as even as he can make it.

Genji looks down, seeming to realize just now that he’s still wearing a three piece suit. He takes it off piece by piece, draping each item carefully across the back of the desk chair under Hanzo’s watchful eye. He walks slowly over, unashamed of his nudity but unsure of his welcome. Hanzo grabs his wrist, tugs him over into the space next to him. They’re eye to eye with no mirror as barrier for the first time that night.

“What do you want?” Hanzo asks, cocking his head and genuinely interested in the answer.

Genji gives a short, disbelieving laugh. “What do you think?”

Hanzo shakes his head. “Sex is easy. What do you _want_?”

A corner of Genji’s mouth tugs up, a bit of that playboy charm seeping through. It fades quickly, however, and his face is oddly serious as he leans forward, presses Hanzo down into the mattress with a kiss. It’s soft until it’s not, propriety and intention falling by the wayside of emotion that’s been bottled up for years.

Genji keeps making small noises in the back of his throat, hips artlessly rutting forward into Hanzo. For his part, Hanzo just can’t stop _touching_. All the skin that Genji has flaunted to the world for years, and now it’s all here for him to take. His hands roam, moving from narrow waist to lithely muscled shoulders and down again, pausing on their journey to tug at a nipple. He flicks the metal that pierces it, and the ringing sound blends into Genji’s quiet moan.

After years of hearing Genji and his flavor of the evening, Hanzo expected him to be louder, more demanding. Instead he moves where Hanzo wants him, the noises he makes unconscious and startled out of him half the time. It’s...genuine, in a way that Genji rarely is.

Feeling empty and impatient, Hanzo pushes Genji back until he’s sitting up between Hanzo’s legs, cock hard and ready. He hands Hanzo the bottle of lube, raises an eyebrow in expectance. Genji tilts the bottle, Hanzo tilts it back before much is poured out.

“Not too much.”

Genji frowns as his finger slips inside. “You’re not very -”

“I want to feel it.” There’s something urgent in his voice, embarrassing and not unnoticed by Genji. He spreads the rest of the slick over himself, hoists Hanzo’s hips up just enough to slide a pillow underneath. The first push in burns in the best of ways. It’s been a while, and there wasn’t nearly enough prep. He can _feel_ Genji, though, feel the ridge of his cockhead work its way through him, feel his foreskin dragging against his damp insides. When Genji pulls out Hanzo clings to him, his body unwilling to let him go.

Their rhythm is something they don’t have to bother considering, a lifetime of training together letting their bodies move without thought. Genji leans forward to catch Hanzo’s lips as he grinds into him as deep as he can. Their mouths fit together so well, for reasons Hanzo pushes to the back of his mind.

Too much friction and too many years of buildup means that everything moves faster than it should. Genji breaks first, his hips slowing as his kisses becomes sloppy and thoughtless, eventually just breathing a low moan into Hanzo’s mouth as he fills him with convulsive twitches. After a minute to recover he thrusts forward again, hard enough to drive himself deeper. It’s smoother, slicker, and between the change in sensation and Genji’s strong fingers wrapped around him, Hanzo comes soon after with a groan. His fingers press hard enough into Genji’s hips that it will likely bruise, and Hanzo finds deep satisfaction in that.

Genji doesn’t pull out, Hanzo doesn’t push him away. The only thing that makes Hanzo eventually move is the tug of dried come on freshly shaved skin that never was soothed by lotion. He’ll be dry and itchy for the next few days, but the last thing he’s going to do is complain. Hanzo pushes Genji to the side, both making half-muffled noises of discomfort as they separate. Hanzo goes to the bathroom, damps down a washcloth to clean himself up. He wipes down a half-asleep Genji as well before getting into bed and hitting the light.

The silence is frustratingly dense.

“Genji, I -”

“Not now. I know...what you’re going to say, what I still have to do. But just one, one single damned night, anija. Let us have this.”

Hanzo nods into the darkness, turns over in bed. Genji wraps an arm around his waist, head nestled between his shoulderblades.

The same as it ever was.

-x-x-x-x-x-

When they come home from the funeral, Genji is twitchy. Hanzo would assume he’s on something except he’s been clean for months at Hanzo’s insistence, and they’ve been trapped together by filial duty for days. There is one ritual after another, one formality following the next, and the elders have insisted on every possible extravagance for Sojiro.

Genji follows Hanzo to his room, practically stepping on his heels. He undresses them with unusual carelessness for their expensive black suits, pushes Hanzo down with frantically grasping hands. Hanzo lets him take what he needs from him. In this case it’s bracing himself against the wall while Genji slams into him again and again, grunting out something that has the barest relationship to pleasure.

Hanzo lies quietly as Genji traces the lines of his tattoo with a come-wet finger, silent but still tense. Hanzo is...Hanzo isn’t quite sure what Hanzo is. He’s not numb, he’s not paralyzed by grief, he’s just - processing. Their father was never a comforting figure, and Hanzo feels less mourning than he does a sense of inevitability. Decades of preparation to take over, and now it's finally here.

He’s not quite sure how Genji feels, either, other than distressed. It’s not at Sojiro’s passing, he’s sure of that. He thinks it might be because as much as Hanzo has defined himself by what their family is, Genji has defined himself as the opposite of that. If there’s nothing to rebel against, what’s left?

Hanzo blinks at the ceiling as Genji’s hand creeps down and around to try and rouse him for a second round. The warmth of arousal slowly builds, though his brain is elsewhere.

“You need to decide.”

“Decide what?” Genji murmurs, mouth preoccupied with nibbling a mark onto Hanzo’s chest.

“Decide who you are going to marry. We’ve delayed it long enough, and now the elders will be impatient. If either of us is killed, we need to ensure the Shimada line continues.”

Genji’s mouth slows and pulls away, his hand on Hanzo’s cock stilling. “But I thought...I mean, we’re here now.”

Hanzo frowns a bit, shakes his head in disbelief as he meets Genji’s eyes. “And so? No child is coming of this, regardless of how much we sleep together. And obviously this could never go public.”

“I know that, fool. I just…I don’t fucking care about the Shimada line,” he says, exhaustion and frustration in his voice. Hanzo understands, to a degree. This is pretty much the only real relationship that Genji has ever had, certainly the only monogamous one. Hanzo gave him the ultimatum early on of ending things either with him or with everyone else, because Hanzo doesn’t share and doesn’t like condoms. Genji had agreed easily, too easily as Hanzo is now realizing. They can never go anywhere with this, not realistically.

He voices as much to Genji, who nods glumly, turning his face away to rest on Hanzo’s chest. “I’m aware. I had just hoped that we could have this, have us for longer.”

Hanzo nods, stroking Genji’s hair. He runs gentle fingers down his cheek, across his lips. He tilts Genji’s head up to meet Hanzo’s gaze for a soft moment before pushing his head down to finish what he started.

-x-x-x-x-x-

A shuriken slams into the doorframe inches from Hanzo’s eyes as he slides the screen open. It’s one of the older ones that Genji doesn’t use anymore, the edge of one arm chipped. A few minutes with a bastard file, work through the finer grades, a bit of high grit and it would be like new, Hanzo thinks absently. His eyes focus past the weapon to see Genji, arms crossed and furious.

“Aren’t we feeling childish today,” Hanzo says, and throws the shuriken back to lodge in the floor at Genji’s feet.

“You had me dragged out practically in handcuffs by your thugs,” Genji spits back. “I was doing nothing but minding my own business -”

“You went on a date with the Ueno girl, and then went right to a club.”

“I barely did anything, you prude.”

“Sure, if having a shot boy’s hands down your pants and god knows what up your nose is ‘barely anything.’”

“For fuck’s sake, Hanzo. No one ever died from a little fun.”

“Really? Because I have three dead Ueno family members in the castle entryway that say otherwise.” Hanzo strips off his black gloves, slaps them against Genji’s chest. “You play and I clean up your messes. Did you think that no one would see? Did you think their family would not take offense? I can’t even blame them for sending assassins.”

“You took care of them.” Genji shrugs. “No harm done.”

Hanzo shakes his head, unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Of course not, Genji. You never see the harm.” He undresses, hanging the suit up carefully. The white shirt, so carefully embroidered, is a loss. There’s blood and vomit and something Hanzo thinks is brain matter that falls out when he unrolls his cuffs. Throwing it in the trash, he glances over to look at Genji, still angry, still twirling a shuriken through his fingers. “You’re still here?”

The fight is nothing so nice as to be called sparring, certainly not anything like a match. Hanzo is stronger but Genji is more agile, and isn’t afraid to use what he had to learn in the alleyways behind clubs when there were no Shimada men to pull him out.

There’s flying sweat and tearing fabric, but it ends with Hanzo straddling Genji, blood dripping from the fingernail marks on his face down onto Genji’s swelling eye. An angry roll of Genji’s hips, and the battle changes. The last remnants of clothing are discarded, Genji fishing in his pants for a small bottle of lube that Hanzo narrows his eyes at.

Genji shoves in a single wet careless finger and calls it good. Hanzo has to forcibly shove himself down, both men wincing at the drag. As Hanzo slams his hips down Genji leans up, grabs Hanzo’s lower lip with unfriendly teeth. He spends as much time licking away the blood as he does kissing Hanzo, biting deep enough into his lip that he can feel his teeth on the other side when Hanzo gives an unexpectedly hard thrust. Hanzo can feel tearing from where Genji has a grip in his newly short hair.

The orgasm seems to take Genji by surprise, fingernails marking the meat of Hanzo’s ass as he holds him in place. Hanzo keeps going after the barest amount of time, uncaring of Genji’s wincing oversensitivity. The ride is smoother with come and not a small bit of blood slicking the way between them, and Hanzo fucks down onto his brother until he stripes his chest with white.

Sitting back, Hanzo lets the familiar post-orgasmic lassitude flow through him as he stretches his back in an arch. He knew, somehow, even as the shuriken vibrated from impact in front of his face, that this would be the last time. He gets up, thigh muscles aching as he stands and walks away.

Genji is left in the middle of the floor, body a mess of white and red, semen and blood. But then aren’t they the same in the end? It’s all family one way or another.

Hanzo exits his bathroom, cleaned up and in another suit. “Get out.”

“Now Hanzo, is that any way to talk to your brother?”

“No, but it’s how I talk to an easy lay who cannot get a single, simple request done.” Hanzo hates himself as he speaks, but he hates the situation they’ve been forced into more. He’d never realized how much Sojiro had been a buffer - the clan elders are in his head now, and it’s all he can do to not be as cruel as they want them to be.

“Simple. Of course. Because it’s not like you’re asking me to give up the rest of my life or anything.”

The last shred of Hanzo’s empathy blows away with the words. The tablet he had picked up is slammed down to the table harder than he intends. “Forgive me for not being in mourning for your whoring days. Some of us never had that chance in the first place and have held up this family despite its burdens.”

Genji gives a bitter, surprised laugh. “I’d say it’s a surprise finding out who you really are, anija, but the clan elders are farther up your ass than I have ever been. If you ever decide to make a decision of your own, please let me know.”

Hanzo trembles with anger as he turns his back and packs his briefcase, half-expecting a shuriken in his spine at any moment. Instead when he turns there’s nothing but an empty room and a tatami mat smeared with fluids.

Genji’s wrong, of course. The one decision that Hanzo had made purely for himself was Genji.

It’s not the first fight they have, though it is the first truly vicious one, a title that is replaced by fresh venom each time they clash. Day by day, the burdens grow. Day by day, Hanzo contains less and less of himself, because the greatest part of him left behind silence and a soiled floor.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Hanzo holds the sword loosely, lazily in his right hand. It’s a good blade, he thinks. Soshu kitae lamination, flat ground on one side and hollow on the other. He’d been interrupted while in the midst of sharpening, so it could have had a better edge although the drag through flesh was negligible. Despite all that, Hanzo has already unconsciously decided he’s done with swords after this. There are certain peaks you know you can never achieve again.

The only sound in the room is the steady dripping of blood from the tip of the blade.

He glances over at the closest guard, whose face is frozen in a careful expression of blankness, skin tone faintly green. “Put in a call to Akitsugu, will you? He’ll know how to handle things.” The guard gives a short nod before looking away quickly.

Hanzo steps over the ruin that was once a body, now just blood and bone and things better kept inside. He doesn’t notice the single brown eye that follows his progress across the room, that silently and unwillingly leaks saltwater onto the floor.

“Here,” Hanzo says, as he hands the sword to a nearby guard. “Have the weapons master clean this up before storage. Blood rots away steel, you know.”

The echoes of his footsteps die away, and the eye closes.


End file.
